About me: My name really is Charlotte. I'm an archaeologist by day, president of the Friends of a small New England library by night, and an avid reader of fantasy and science fiction (and 20th-century British girls' books, but I don't blog about them much). I moved to Rhode Island for grad school many years ago, and ended up marrying an Irish piper/ethnomusicologist, owning an old house that (still) needs lots of work, and having two boys (now 14 and 17). To fill my copious free time, I started this blog more than ten years ago.

Here is a picture of me. The sparkly-ness is tongue in cheek.

About my blog: I began blogging on February 1st, 2007. Since then, I've narrowed the focus of my blog from children's books in general to fantasy and science fiction books for kids and teenagers. That being said, I will occasionally review books that aren't sci fi/fantasy if they catch my fancy, so you'll find here a smattering of children's non-fiction and picture books (especially those that have fantasy elements). I'm particularly interested in time travel books and multicultural sci fi/fantasy for kids, and you can find lists of all my reviews in those sub-genres up at the top of the blog.

I'm an active member of Kidlitosphere, and am the coordinator of middle grade speculative fiction category of Cybils Awards panelist. I only occasionally participate in blog tours, or interview authors, but I'm open to doing both if the book or the author is a good fit for my blog.

Every Sunday I round-up all the blog posts I can find pertaining to middle grade (ages 9-12 ish) sci fi/fantasy--please feel free to email me at any time during the week if you have a link for me!

My review policies: I welcome middle grade and young adult science fiction and fantasy books for review. I read every book I receive (although not to the end, if I'm not liking it), but I can't promise to review every book I am sent. I generally won't review books don't work for me, so if you have sent me a book and I haven't written a review, that would be why. That being said, I reserve the right to write mixed reviews, or even negative reviews.

I firmly believe that self-published and small press books can be excellent, and so I might accept them if offered (it depends on whether the book's description piques my interest, and how many books are already in my stack--at the moment, my stack is pretty large, so I'm being very selective--right now, I'm accepting very few requests. Sorry). And again, I generally won't review books I didn't like, so even if I accept your self-published book, you might never see me posting about it.

I'm afraid I can't accept ebooks for review at this time, so please don't offer them to me!

The majority of the review copies of finished books I receive (unless I love a book so very much I have to keep it) are passed on to my local public library. Many books end up in Little Free Libraries in Providence, some Middle grade ARCs are passed on to my son's friends, and the bulk of the YA ARCs end up as summer reading prizes at the library.